Red Ink
by crimson-clee
Summary: The chase ends here. // Imagining a hundred different ways of finally meeting Zero was like a hundred parallel rainbows streaked across the sky. She wasn’t sad when he leveled his gun at her. // Zeki


**R e d** _x _**I n k**

_xxx_

_s__pin around spin around spin around  
until you know the wheel has stopped turning for you._

_xxx  
_

_

* * *

  
_

1. Confidant

"She's that pureblood princess."

"The Kuran's daughter? Thought they only had a son."

"I heard she was disguised as a human before."

Yuuki sighed, and after sharing a look with her brother, she put down her drink on a waiter's tray. Quietly she slipped out of the ballroom through a back exit and went down the long dark corridor to her room, the chilly material of her dress waving against her knees. The lack of light didn't affect her eyesight, she saw as well as outside on a bright day.

She hadn't seen the real sun _– blazingly white –_ for a long time. It wasn't the same anymore when she watched the red and orange tinted sun set and rise as her day would always be the night. She was used to pale light or none at all, the happy clarity of a sunny day left a memory she hoped never to forget. Everything around her felt upside down when, in truth, it was just her that was reversed.

Sitting down at the cherry wood desk in her room, her hands automatically reached for a thin pile of papers she had purposefully hid under a leather-bound tome on vampire history, placing a blank sheet on top.

Without hesitation, her fingers gripped a pen and wrote down what she couldn't voice, too afraid of a short-winded, tearful breakdown even after all this time.

_Dear Zero.  
_

_xxx  
_

2. Secret

"Yuuki." That half-broken, half-mended tone had always been able to make her heart ache in both longing and desperation. Ever since, it had reminded her of the voice of a lonely traveler; one who had experienced his company dying off and off, one who didn't quite trust the peace of a forever together, a lifetime he could not outlive. "Come over here."

Being part of the people who had caused him pain, she was all too willing to slide onto the couch beside him.

His hand started to stroke her hair and he let out a sigh as though the simple sense of feeling her nearby restored his mind's peace. But the conclusion would be too easy, reckless even because Yuuki knew she was still constantly adding level to his doubts.

"You think about him, don't you?"

She could try and lie as she had done once, in the beginning. It seemed years away, albeit only a few months had passed since then. But she was a bad liar and he deserved better. The question probably hurt him as much as slicing his own palm open with a knife. Yuuki figured because actually thinking about Zero felt the same way.

"Sometimes," she admitted, trying to conceal secret thoughts from her voice. It sounded lighthearted in her ears.

"Yuuki," he said again, cupping her cheeks in his hands, leaving her no way to avoid facing him and not noticing the piercing look locked upon her. She watched him close his eyes for a moment before they re-opened; the steel was gone and only the magical combination of brown and red in his irises left. As always they drew her in. "I understand."

His words, his simple words passed through the haze in her mind. The result was her heart sinking with a multiplied sense of guilt. _Sometimes_ rang in her ears, sounding nothing but false. She lied to him, to herself. Half-truths. The pain wasn't razor-like, it was like a piercing stab in the back.

"I'm sorry, Onii-sama." She moved away from his hands to bury her head in the base of his neck where she could listen to the steady sound of his pulse. She closed her eyes.

"Don't be. It's not your fault." He whispered in her hair, moving his head downwards. "It will go away with time."

His tongue brushed a spot on her neck softly before his fangs pierced through the skin. She couldn't help but shiver in anticipation and lean back at his gentleness. Kaname's arms closed around her waist to pull her back; like a doll's her body sunk against his.

Unlike her first _– human –_ memories of someone feeding on her, with him now there were no waves of adrenaline speeding up her pulse's beat after they'd connected. Zero's secret feeding had always held her up, ready to leap to her feet to defend him in case someone was to come across them. She had always felt wobbly, almost fluent, in his arms yet rigid and aware.

Yuuki couldn't tell her brother something felt terribly wrong. She couldn't tell anybody she didn't want it to_ go away with time_. Thinking of the paper sheets below the old book on the cherry wood desk back in her room, she knew she couldn't write it down either.

In black and white things had always been true, but she wasn't so sure anymore whether the option fit her new circumstances any longer. And she started composing in her head.

_Dear Zero.  
_

_xxx_

3. Friend

One time, not long after her departure from her old home, she had actually completed a letter. It had been written in a rush when she couldn't get the thoughts off her mind fast enough, thus the thick paper was blotched with ink. She imagined Yori squint her eyes when she would receive the letter, in an attempt to decipher the scrawled words under the stains but eventually figure them out. That was what her friend did; seeing right through her without too much hints.

Zero used to read her too, and countered with his no-nonsense attitude while her best friend remained understanding. They were her counterparts, the ones who gave her life a steady pulse.

The steady pulse was replaced by hideouts, travelling in disguise and fleetingly blurring faces. Yuuki had long realized that Kaname's role in her old life had been that of her admired savior. What she reluctantly found out later was that he also had been the one to tip off the balance, the one who made her old life falter and ultimately fall apart.

Now he took on the role to recompile the pieces of a life he thought was meant to be hers. She wasn't sure whether he succeeded or pieced together a hollow frame.

Maybe the hollow frame would fill with time, the same way memories of Zero were supposed to _go away with time_.  
She couldn't help denying it. Time didn't heal or mend, at least not if she refused to heal in a way she thought was wrong. But she couldn't tell anyone about the wrongness of her new life, because she was Kuran Yuuki, the princess the vampire community had never really lost but found. She was admired, respected, worshipped, judged to be placed on a different level than everyone else, and confined there.

So she ended up stashing her thoughts away in letters, had them piling up in a secret compartment of her desk, all of that began the same way.

_Dear Zero.  
_

_xxx_

4. Breath

Secretly, she dreamt of the day she would be able to send all those letters. With time they began to burn like blisters as if to remind her of their purpose, and she dreaded even thinking about them, a chain of reactions attached. But the pain could be sweet as well because it also reminded her of what looking forward to something was like when you blissfully ignored worst case scenarios. Imagining a hundred different ways of finally meeting Zero was like a hundred parallel rainbows streaked across the sky.

Their encounter was nothing like her fantasy of course. However, she wasn't sad when he leveled his Bloody Rose at her.

He had sworn to kill her. She had promised to run away forever. But what if forever was really a materialized torture, the seconds ticking away on the grandfather clock in the library but always repeating, never ending? What if forever was a broken promise of denial?

As Yuuki smiled, Zero narrowed his eyes. She imagined him wondering what had turned her eyes dark in sorrowfulness, the line of her mouth crooked bitterly. Maybe he was seeing himself in her. Or maybe he was angry at her for not holding up to her promise. Most likely, however, he was thinking she was planning his demise. "Sorry," she said finally. There was so much to add to that one word. Sorry for leaving, sorry for betraying you.

"Monsters don't feel sorry. Where's Kuran?" Sorry for causing you pain. Sorry for having been blind.

"Right here." She saw him flinch, staring at her when she pointed at her chest. Sorry for being what I am. Sorry for making you love me. Sorry for forcing my death on you. "He's not here, Zero. It's you and me."

"Like old times, right?" He asked bitterly. His hand was shaking slightly but maybe that was because he was gripping the gun so hard that the skin over his knuckles turned visibly white. "You won't run away?"

Sorry for all those times teasing you. Sorry for making you worry. Sorry for never telling you. It was a guilt trap. No matter what she would do, someone would end up hurt. With one more, final time the circle would end.

"I won't."

"You promised, though."

Yuuki nodded, her curls bobbing on her shoulders. "But the chase ends here. However, I want to ask something of you, Zero."

He shifted on his feet though his eyes stayed locked with hers. His gaze was steely, cold, but she thought she could see something more and took it as consent. Her brother would learn of her decision, at last. She wished she would have been brave enough to tell him in person.

"In the bottom drawer of my desk, in the book about vampire history – there are letters inside. I want you to send all of them according to the date on the envelope. Each."

Slowly, he nodded. Was he anticipating the moment he would finally pull the trigger? Was he stalling? "Why don't you say anything?" She said in a high-pitched voice. His staring at her as though trying to engrave her appearance into his mind was unsettling her. She was being brave and self-less for once. It wasn't the focus of a predator on his face and it scared her. "Why don't you end it?"

She had made up her mind. The final time to end everything. Yuuki steadied her stance, breaking off the eye contact with him.

"Sorry for never telling you how my heart belonged to you before you ripped it apart and kept the pieces."

The shot came fast, to blurred even for her eyes. She gasped, never screamed. Reckless. Self-less. A fire started to run through seemingly every cell of her body, blazing and poisonous. The impact threw her on the back, knocking something over in the fall. For a moment, her mind was convinced she had died on the spot but then her eye sight brightened up to dim colors.

She lifted a hand towards where she supposed he was still standing, if he hadn't left already. Living alone was a torture, dying alone was said to be a punishment.

"Zero."

Because he was the person she yearned to confide in. "Letters…" The air came in raggedy breaths now; she lost the feel in her fingertips, forgot that they lay in a pool of blood on either side of her. The rims at her vision were turning black, growing wider. "Zero."

She thought he was gripping her hands when he bent over her, saying something. His breath brushed over her face, initiating a final shudder ripple through her limps. Her last conscious thought was of the finishing line in one of her letters.

Eternity without you is nothing. It never went away with time.

_xxx_

* * *

_I never had a longer playlist to listen to than when I wrote this. I don't want to put all of it up here but I can tell you if you're interested :D Listen to The Chase by My Favorite Highway at least.  
_

_I've been writing on this since around February. I don't know what got into me but I finally finished more than half of it last night, in a hyper Zeki mood. Um, I do realize though that this is rather depressive and angsty and the likes.  
Maybe be the influence from all the KanaYuu in the lastest manga chapters got to my head and twisted my originally planned Happy Ending._

_Please review and tell me your opinion._


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